A typical Velocirapture flight operations profile:
- The Velocirapture goes to the begining of the runway.
- The propellant (in a standard shipping container on a normal sized tractor trailer) is moved onto the runway behind the aircraft.
- The propellant case is opened, and the propellant is drawn out and threaded into the aircraft's engine.
- Take off from a 1000 meter municipal runway. Acceleration is at 1.5 G for 3 seconds for a lift off speed of 50 m/s.
- Climb nearly vertically to 75km altitude, then accelerate horizontally until you run out of propellant. This takes about 450 seconds.
- "Glide" toward destination 20,000 km away. At 7.7 km/s, this takes 2600 seconds.
- Fire retros, descend and land. Peak deceleration is about 3 G - this takes 300 seconds, during which you travel the final 1150 km to your destination.
Total time: 3370 seconds, or 56 minutes
Total distance: 22,000 km - any point on Earth can be reached
Think you can coax a little more speed out of it? Try our flight simulator!
